The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo should urgently carry out new recommendations from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to protect children from violence and abuse.

In this submission to the committee, Human Rights Watch presents information on child soldiers, children in detention, sexual violence against girls, and abuses against street children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The country continues to face high levels of violence associated with both electoral politics and common crime. Guatemala’s weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions have proven incapable of containing the powerful organized crime groups that, among other things, are believed responsible for continuing attacks on human rights defenders.

Government roundup campaigns to clear Hanoi’s streets of “wanderers” and “vagrants” are landing street children in detention centers, where some are beaten and subject to other forms of abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Hundreds of persons, many of them children, are being held in deplorable conditions in an unofficial detention center in the Gikondo neighborhood of the Rwandan capital Kigali, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper issued today.

As presidential elections approach, Congo’s tens of thousands of street children risk political manipulation and physical harm.

Human Rights Watch has documented the plight of Uganda’s lost generation of children in a new video, “Night Commuters: Uganda’s Forgotten Children of War.” A powerful photo essay by Bruno Stevens accompanies the video.